Did you know your family doctor is board-certified to care for patients of all ages, ‘from cradle to grave?’ While many people in communities like ours have a primary care provider (PCP) that they call for preventive healthcare and use as a starting point when something is wrong, many do not realize that family medicine is a formal medical specialty designed to follow a person and their family through all stages of life and varying degrees of health.
Founded in 1969, as the 20th medical specialty recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties, the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) formally certifies physicians who have completed four years of medical school and three years of a residency training program, plus passed stringent exams, to be qualified in this unique field of medical care.
Ironically, the focus of family medicine is longitudinal continuity of care. No other medical specialty targets a whole person followed over an indefinite amount of time (ideally a lifetime), rather than on one particular age group, body system, or type of disorder.
At Family Health West Primary Care, we utilize a team of board-certified family physicians (MDs and DOs), family nurse practitioners (FNPs), physician associates/assistants (PAs), and other staff to provide comprehensive primary care services. Our mission is to match patients with a PCP who can get to know any individual and their family members, from infants to seniors, to help manage and navigate through healthy mental and physical development as well as malfunctioning stages of life.
One of our family physicians, Angie Gao DO, describes the variety of patients she is trained to manage on any given day.
“I may examine a newborn just hours from birth in the hospital, then head to our clinic in Fruita to see a middle-aged man with high blood pressure, clear a high school athlete for their spring sport, adjust the medication of a diabetic grandmother, place an intrauterine device (IUD), chat with a talkative toddler, biopsy a suspicious mole on a middle-aged man, and then comfort a recent college grad who is struggling through a breakup and can’t find a job,” she said. “I may have also answered a couple of portal messages from patients, signed some paperwork to arrange a patient’s hospice care, and approved a few prescription refills. And that’s just in the morning!”
Having practiced in the valley for over 20 years, Dr. Gao emphasizes the true satisfaction of being a family doctor comes from knowing her patients through various stages of life.
“We are fortunate to have many excellent pediatricians in our community, whom I very much respect as my professional colleagues,” she said. “A big difference between them and our team of family physicians, however, is that we get to continue caring for kids even after they transition to adulthood. I never have to ‘graduate’ anyone from my practice because they turned 18, and I cannot even tell you how fun it is to be the doctor of a baby plus their mother, whom I’ve known since she was in middle school.”
Furthermore, she adds that helping patients before, during, and after trauma or illness events is a special privilege.
“We see patients through tears of pain but also tears of joy,” Dr. Gao said. “Our office goes through a lot of Kleenex.”
Our team of providers at Family Health West Primary Care encourages patients of all ages and life stages to find the primary care provider that best fits the needs of themselves and their whole family. Anyone interested in establishing care in our Fruita or Redlands clinics is welcome to explore our services by calling (970) 858-9894 or viewing our website at https://fhw.org/services/primary-care/.
